Month: January 2006

A Slow Sort of Country

Since moving from the Movabletype platform to the WordPress platform, posts prior to the reform appear all misshapen and ugly. I am fixing then as time and mood permits. Recently worked on a post from over two years ago called India’s Wonderful Reforms. Nothing much appears to have changed.
Continue reading “A Slow Sort of Country”

The Lights to Navigate By

In a comment to the post on political parties launched by entrepreneurs, “Seven Times Six” wrote:

I don’t think renunciation and self-sacrifice is necessary for a nation to prosper. What is required is the exact opposite — a strong avarice and ambition to promote one’s well-being.
Continue reading “The Lights to Navigate By”

The New Startups: Political Parties

Seems like the geeks are diversifying from being entrepreneurs in high tech to being entrepreneurs in politics. They are forming political parties. Aditya Pancholi alerted me to “PARITRANA, the Political party for the Bharat of 21st century” started by a group of very young professionals who share the common background of having gone to IITs. Continue reading “The New Startups: Political Parties”

A Sunny Pleasure Dome with Caves of Ice

At the risk of being branded a Luddite, I maintain that the world wide web is the single most distracting thing ever invented by humans. The internet is immensely useful for practical matters of course but aside from its utilitarian functions, it is also capable of providing a device for pure play. It can be, in the hands of an appropriately interested and educated human, a virtually (sic) inexhaustible source of joy, the intellectual equivalent of Kubla Khan’s “miracle of rare device, a sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice.” Continue reading “A Sunny Pleasure Dome with Caves of Ice”

Radio Economics: A Podcast of Economists

Among the contemporary economists I greatly admire, Paul Krugman and Jeffrey Sachs appear at the top. Much of what I know of international trade, I learnt from Krugman and Obstfeld’s book on the subject. I admire Sachs for the work he is doing in focusing attention on the problems of underdeveloped parts of the world. So it is a definitely edifying experience to hear Krugman and Sachs on Radio Economics, a podcast site produced by Dr. James Reese, an economics professor at the University of South Carolina Upstate. Continue reading “Radio Economics: A Podcast of Economists”

Discussion: Indian Voters are Corrupt

This place is far too quiet. Time to stir it up a bit. So let’s have a bit of a debate. The proposition before the house is:
The Indian voter is corrupt.

That article is from around the time of the general elections of 2004. I discovered a bunch of posts in the archives which are relevant. Here they are:

April 2004, Democracy in India
May 2004, Cargo Cult and Democracy
Nov 2004, India, the World’s Largest Kleptocracy
Dec 2004, On Being Ruled by Toads

What is your dangerous idea?

Someone remarked that writing is three percent inspiration and 97 percent not getting distracted by stuff on the world wide web. I can relate to that. Every time I try to get something done, I go wandering all over what I call the cyberhypersphere. This is not really a thinly-veiled attempt at explaining away why I have not been writing stuff on this blog.
Continue reading “What is your dangerous idea?”

Lee Kuan Yew on India — Part 4

[Continued from Part 3.]

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe, said Abe Lincoln. Astonishing how much profoundly practical wisdom is packaged into that simple declaration. Time spent in sharpening the tool is time well-spent; so is time spent in thinking through a problem and thoroughly understanding the problem before rushing off to solve it. And in most cases, since there is almost nothing new under the sun, there are already known solutions to many problem. So the most efficient method to solve a problem is to first seek the solution that someone may have figured out already.
Continue reading “Lee Kuan Yew on India — Part 4”